Has your business started outsourcing yet to countries like the Philippines? If not, you’re missing on a huge opportunity to find top talent and optimize your staffing expenses.

The average salary in the Philippines for a virtual assistant usually ranges from $250 to $550 USD per month. Compared with salaries in the US, Australia or UK this is a lot more affordable, and you will find that assistants in the Philippines have a very high level of written and spoken English. So the Philippines is a great country to look for virtual talent.

OnlineJobs.ph is a great website to look for these type of virtual assistant staff members, however there are a number of alternatives.

So, where else can you look for qualified and experienced freelancers in the Philippines or around the world? Here are some of the top options:

Freelancing marketplaces

Upwork (formerly known as Odesk which also has combined with Elance) is the largest marketplace and Freelancer.com is the second largest. Guru and Peopleperhour.com are two smaller alternatives. With these websites you’ll find numerous qualified and highly experienced professionals but you’ll also have to filter through low quality applications.

The manner in which you put your ad together will be of uttermost importance for boosting the relevance of the applications. Mention all of your requirements and the experience level that you’re interested in. If you leave the ad open to interpretation, chances are that many unqualified individuals will also apply.

Alternative job posting boards

Freelancing marketplaces tend to focus on project work and many of the freelancers have multiple clients so you might find it harder to find someone who is available full time and is dedicated to you. Also you will find that a lot of people on Upwork will quote higher rates (in fact the minimum rate on the site is $3/hour which is $480/month, which is actually quite a reasonable rate for most professionals in the Philippines for example. So if you want to see people quoting in their local rates OnlineJobs.ph is a good alternative.

Onlinejobs.ph is 100 percent dedicated to enabling clients to get in touch with Filipino freelancers. Outsourcing to the Philippines happens to be an attractive option for numerous company owners because of the highly affordable rates, diligence, competitive skills and punctual communication style.

To post an OnlineJobs ad, however, you will need to pay. Though a free plan does exist, the website doesn’t let you contact workers or read reviews about the freelancers. The most inexpensive OnlineJobs plan that gives you access to all of the features costs 49 dollars per month.

Alternative job posting sites

Staff.com (our site) is another good place to post a job and it’s available currently free of charge.

Unlike onlinejobs.ph, Staff.com gives you access to a global talent pool. According to the website’s official presentation, there are currently more than 187,000 registered staff members. These freelancers have experience in the fields of writing, IT, video and multimedia, ecommerce, customer services, translation, graphic design and many others.

Posting an ad on Staff.com is free of charge. It’s also free to contact any of the profiles on the site.

There are not a whole lot of other good quality options for posting jobs online for remove workers. You can try BestJobs and also Craigs List Manila, for two other free Philippine job posting sites.

Everything was going great until some issues started to arise. They will take your payment of $50/month and not actually post your jobs, how bogus is that? They post FAKE jobs instead leaving both us employers and employees out of luck. What I don’t get is why they do this when we pay them for their services?